Techmeme
November 23, 2020, 12:00 PM

Top News

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Snap announces Spotlight, a vertically scrollable TikTok-like feed inside Snapchat, and will pay $1M everyday to users who create the top Snaps through 2020  —  After taking on TikTok with music-powered features last month, Snapchat this morning is officially launching a dedicated place within …
New York Times:
A look at Sugon, a Chinese company at the heart of the country's surveillance efforts, and how it uses Intel and Nvidia chips to analyze video feeds at scale  —  Intel and Nvidia chips power a supercomputing center that tracks people in a place where government suppresses minorities …
Laura Forman / Wall Street Journal:
Analysis: Facebook and Instagram ads appear to be reaching a saturation point after rising by a ~30% quarterly average since Q3 2015  —  Spending big money to make big money in the ad business may no longer be on the table inside Facebook's network  —  Facebook Inc.'s platforms are starting to feel like homes with too much furniture.
Peter Grant / Wall Street Journal:
CoStar, which provides commercial real estate information and analytics, says it will buy Homesnap, an app that improves real estate agent workflows, for $250M  —  Purchase would mark the company's first significant step into residential data  —  CoStar Group, Inc., one of the world's largest providers …
New York Times:
As bots plague everything from Tinder to Twitter, a look at how generative adversarial networks create images and videos of fake people, sold on many websites  —  There are now businesses that sell fake people.  On the website Generated.Photos, you can buy a “unique, worry-free” fake person for $2.99, or 1,000 people for $1,000.
Nikki Sun / Nikkei Asia:
China orders that streamers and gift givers on livestreaming services must use real names, and the services must limit amount of tips and ban teens from tipping  —  Hosts and gift givers must provide real name, after accusations of abuse  —  HONG KONG — China's media watchdog on Monday ordered …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Gartner: global Q3 smartphone sales declined 5.7% YoY to 366M as Samsung continues to lead with 80.8M overall units and a 22% market share  —  As we head into the all-important holiday sales period, new numbers from Gartner point to some recovery for the smartphone market as vendors roll out a raft of new 5G handsets.
Katie Roof / Bloomberg:
AvePoint, which develops cloud governance tools for Microsoft's software, says it will go public via a merger with Apex Technology SPAC in a deal worth ~$2B  —  - Microsoft partner valued at $2 billion in the transaction  — The agreement includes a $140 million private investment
More: TechCrunch and Petri

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Earlier Picks

Apoorva Mandavilli / New York Times: